Case studies

Leadership in Sales

The ICT sales team at Romeo is highly skilled and knowledgeable, but struggles to move ‘up the value chain’ and build C-suite relationships. There are increasing external pressures on the business to achieve this.

The presenting problems did not include a skill gap (the company had invested in methodologies such as SPIN, Strategic Selling and The Challenger Sales) so we facilitated workshops with the Leadership Team to explore other areas.

What emerged was that the senior Relationship Managers lacked a common definition of “what good looks like in Sales Leadership”. Having examined some failed and won bids, collected thoughts from the Sales teams and friendly customers, the team worked on practical steps to improve their impact.

We asked them “what will it look like when it works superbly?” Their description included the following:

The Sales Leadership Role

We focus on things like consequences, outcomes, recognition

Good at handling conflict

Collective vision + shared outcome = buy-in

There is a clear role as ‘manager of the process’ – separate from leadership

We rehearse for comfort and confidence

This template has since been used as a touch-point for our individual members of the Sales Leadership Team. We are told that Bid Teams are now far more confident in aiming at the C-suite.

Contemplating Our Transformation

The CEO of a City of London (Delta) organisation invited us to help their transformation and build an ambitious roadmap for the future reflecting:

New methods of regulation

An influx of new players with a range of propositions

A large number of businesses in financial services and the arrival of non-traditional organisations

New opportunities to expand its range of services

Our brief was therefore to:

Produce robust, sanity-checked Value Propositions for key offerings which Delta could offer to the industry.

Develop further Delta’s management team, enabling it to create and champion the Value Propositions with skill and confidence.

Deliver a range of other skills and materials (e.g. well-articulated statements of Added Value, elevator pitches etc.) to position Delta in the new world.

So far we have facilitated a series of workshops on to develop Value Propositions and to explore the Myers Briggs Type make-up of the management team. Four of the Partnership’s coaching team have been engaged to work with individual members of that team.

A newly appointed first-time CEO

A newly appointed first-time CEO of a high-profile national institution.

Three months into the role he agreed with his Chairman that he would benefit from the services of a coach.

When an executive takes on the biggest role in a company there is a mixture of excitement and apprehension for the CEO and for the organization as a whole.

He identified his major strengths (his achievements, skills, experience and qualities, i.e. the reasons why the Board appointed him). A feedback exercise 4 months into the role re-inforced these strengths as well as identifying themes and patterns as to what he could consider changing.

Over a period of 9 months we worked with him. He was very open in expressing his fears and felt strongly that it was a priority for him to conquer these self fears about his adequacy to be successful.

His main aim was to build his self-confidence in communicating effectively and in tackling difficult situations in the business.

At the end of the coaching he was gracious in relaying to the Board and to his staff that the coaching had had a massive impact on making him become highly confident much more quickly than he considered he would have achieved without a coach.

Bupa Arabia – A very successful company

Bupa Arabia – A very successful company, with an excellent reputation, part of the specialist healthcare international group

They are market and location leaders investing heavily in growing and developing a highly skilled and motivated workforce. Executive coaching is a focal point for their investment – newly appointed critical job holders and three layers of executive managers are included in the personal executive coaching development plan

Through our involvement we are contributing to the company being one of the early movers in using a coaching style of leadership as a predominant managerial style. The goal is to embed a coaching culture in the organization. There is a fully integrated approach to identifying talent and planning for succession. Steps are taken to ensure people have their skills upgraded continually to help them in their current roles. Significant preparation is invested to ensure identified succession talent are ready for their future roles.

Professional services business Bravo has hired a new CEO... [Read more]

Positive changes we have seen as a result of the Partnership's coaching. I wanted to reinforce that message and thank you for your support and the improvement in behaviour and performance that we have seen.

The support I had from my coach during my first 90 days with the organisation helped me make the business my own, to get the re-shaping underway with clearly defined deliverables. The revised proposition was signed off by the board and crucially the sales decline has been arrested.